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'Cars 3' preview: Here’s what to expect from the new Cars movie (spoiler alert)

The important takeaway: 'Cars 3' is much better than 'Cars 2' was

June 12, 2017

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The first "Cars" movie was a gem, a heartwarming tale of redemption and friendship that will still be worth watching even after you and your toddlers have seen it 400 times. Trust us, we know. "Cars 2" was a little more ... confusing. OK, "Cars 2" was a lot more confusing, with 17 different plotlines that only randomly intersected. But the car-world details present in each shot made "Cars 2" worth freezing the frame on your DVD player to pick out all the neat car stuff the artists worked into each scene.

"Cars 3" arrives Friday and it is, thankfully, much more like "Cars" than it is like "Cars 2," if maybe for different reasons.

The basic plot of "Cars," as you’ll recall, was that the vain, self-glorious race-car character Lightning McQueen couldn’t see beyond his own immediate racing goals (don’t we all know someone like that?). His self-absorption ended up alienating all those closest to him. He learned, of course, that it is through helping others that he winds up helping himself. Even though he doesn’t win the Piston Cup and he turns down that lucrative Dinoco sponsorship, he sees that friends are what count and that friends are worth more than all the Dinoco dollars you could dump into a Piston Cup.

In the 10 years between "Cars" and "Cars 3," McQueen has had quite a career. He’s won several Piston Cups and numerous sponsor dollars from the Rusteze Corporation, makers of bumper ointment. But while McQueen was winning all those years, younger, higher-tech racers were moving up. As more and more of his former racing buddies retire or get fired, Lightning finds himself increasingly alienated, alone on the track and, ultimately, being passed.

“The next-gen racers are cool,” said "Cars 3" director Brian Fee. “You can see instantly that cars like (McQueen’s ultimate rival) Jackson Storm are effortlessly fast. We designed these younger, faster cars to be sleek and aerodynamic -- and they’re a sharp contrast to Lightning McQueen.”

Producer Reher says the story is reflective of real-life champions.

“Lightning McQueen has been racing for more than a decade,” said Reher. “He’s struggling with the kind of issues a lot of athletes face later in their careers. Do you go out on top or fight till the end?”

McQueen in training

Panic strikes McQueen early in the movie when Jackson Storm passes him in a race. He leaves the pits too soon, a tire blows, and there’s a terrible accident, the latter which you’ve seen in the trailer for the movie. This puts McQueen in a conundrum: keep racing and risk going out with a whimper, or get back in the game and try going out with a bang?

Here is where new sponsorship and a means of high-tech training show a potential way to put McQueen back on top. He meets Cruz Ramirez, a car trainer tasked with not only getting him in shape but bringing him into the new high-tech era of racing, the era soon to be dominated by new young cars.

Of course, the old-school McQueen can’t adapt, at least not right away. He balks at all the technology he is confronted with, and he blows it in the XD24GTS Mk C racing simulation trainer. Then he blows it trying to train on the beach like they did in the old days. Then he tries to disguise himself and sneak into a small-town bullring for more old-school practice laps, but it turns out to be figure-8 race, with disastrous results.

He recalls his mentor, Doc Hudson, who appears in memory, and whose Paul Newman-voiced character appears via voice recordings from the first Cars movie. But with Doc gone, McQueen seeks inspiration from Doc’s crew chief, Smokey, an old pickup truck based on real-life crew chief Smokey Yunick. He meets Smokey, as well as other old-time racers, each of whom had to overcome challenges they faced in their times. It helps, but he still has to win his next race to keep his sponsorship deal and continue doing the thing he loves.

Since it’s a movie, this all comes to a head in Act 3. He’s made a deal with his new sponsor boss: The whole thing comes down to The Florida 500 –- if he can win that, he gets to keep racing, keep his new, big bucks sponsorship deal and all will be well. We won’t tell you what happens. But we can explore a few themes.

McQueen’s trainer on the XD24GTS MkC racing simulator is like an automotive aerobics instructor, getting cars under her tutelage to use their biggest fears to overcome the obstacles they face, both real and imagined, on the track. But Cruz has obstacles herself. And just as McQueen needs her to get himself back into winning form, it turns out McQueen can help his trainer just as much.

The ending hinges on a little-known aspect of Piston Cup rule-book interpretation, but play along with it. It works.

"Cars 3" opens nationwide Friday, June 16. See it a few times this summer.